Hong Kong University (HKU) defended its honorary doctorate award this month to one of the architects of China’s highly criticized organ transplant system after the University of Hong Kong Students’ Union criticized the decision.

After meeting with China’s former vice minister for health, Huang Jiefu, the union issued the critical statement, pointing to Huang’s admission that the Chinese regime had taken organs from prisoners sentenced to death. A spokesperson for the students’ union said Huang told them he did not know where the organs came from, that he represented only the recipient, a position that did not seem to square with his own admissions of removing organs from executed prisoners.

Revised remarks to the European Economic and Social Committee
19 March 2014, Brussels, Belgium
by David Matas

I want in this talk to cover three topics: the evidence on the killing of Falun Gong for their organs; recent developments and next steps to combat organ transplant abuse in China.

Evidence

I am a lawyer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in private practice. My clients are primarily refugee claimants seeking protection in Canada. I have been engaged in this professional work for almost all of my professional career.

Because my clients flee human rights violations, I have become familiar through my work with the human rights situation in many countries, including China. I try, as best I can, not only to assist my clients in obtaining protection, but also to combat the human rights violations which caused them to flee. In addition to tribunal and court work for individual clients, I have become involved in research, writing, advocacy and activism in the broader human rights scene.

The Chinese regime’s macabre practice of killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs was raised before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva recently by the Vancouver-based Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada.

Speaking at a session reviewing the UNHRC’s report on China’s human rights record, Vani Selvarajah of Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada reiterated a recent European Parliament resolution demanding an immediate end to the forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China, “mainly Falun Gong practitioners.”

Exposure is growing about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. Nearly 1.5 million people globally have signed a petition calling for the CCP’s live organ harvesting practices to end. In China, people have also started a wave of petitions, and are demanding an investigation into these crimes. In Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, as many as 11,015 Chinese have signed a petition.

Following persistent exposure and clarification about the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, more Chinese people are becoming aware of these crimes. A petition to end live organ harvesting has rapidly spread across China. In mid-December 2012, 310 people in China signed a petition to end organ harvesting, and a call to investigate the involvement of CCP officials Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai. At the end of 2013, a further 6,259 people have also signed the petition. During 2014, petitions against live organ harvesting continue to grow inside China.

An organization in Europe has sought to put organ harvesting in China at the top of the agenda during the current trip to Europe of Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping.

Xi arrived in Europe on March 22. He met with U.S. President Barack Obama on March 24 and is holding meetings with various European officials and governmental representatives, among them European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

The European Economic and Social Committee said its plan was to “welcome” Xi Jinping to Europe when they held a forum on March 19 which announced that the Chinese regime’s use of organs “from prisoners of conscience, executed persons, and minorities groups, to be sold in China or outside the country, is a disgrace for humanity and should end immediately.”

When I was held in a women’s prison, they took a sample of my blood. The label on the test tube said, “Blood-DNA.” At that time, I only knew that DNA had something to do with genes and could be used in paternity tests. I wasn’t sure why I had to have a DNA test in prison.

I recently found out that DNA screening is required for an organ transplant. I then remembered that I had read about living Falun Gong practitioners having their organs removed and sold to patients who needed organs.

It suddenly became clear to me that the things the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials did to practitioners who were imprisoned, including blood tests and DNA screening, were connected to organ harvesting. The results from blood and DNA tests were logged in a database so that the information could be retrieved any time someone needed to purchase an organ.

A high profile conference was held in Brussels on Tuesday for the representatives of the civil society, European Parliament, NGOs, doctors and lawyers on organ harvesting in China.
“Scandalous and unacceptable” — that is what the European Social and Economic Committee is calling the practice of organ harvesting from live prisoners of conscince in China.

[Henri Malosse, President of EESC]:
“It is really scandalous what’s happened and unfortunately is still happening in China with authorities authorizing the harvesting, stealing of organs from prisoners, people coming from minorities, from executed persons to be sold to foreigners or to local people. This is not acceptable.”

The View From Inside China’s Brutal Prison System
By George Karimi | March 20, 2014

By now many of us heard the Chinese Communist Party’s promises to close its system of forced labor camps. While I sincerely hope this comes to pass, the other forms of detention in China have not gone away—in particular, the regime’s notorious prison system remains as brutal and lawless as ever. I was an inmate of Chinese jails for seven years, and have seen and experienced what conditions there are like.

Abuses in countries outside China have been reported because inspectors are allowed there. But never since the Communist Party came to power in 1949 has it allowed unfettered, independent investigation of its vast detention system. When UN personnel visited in 2005, their movements were severely restricted.

The small Nordic country of Finland was recently treated to a peculiar piece of political theater: A Chinese woman was kicked out of its anti-immigration party for being too discriminatory.

This particular conflict had its genesis in an unassuming email sent by the organizer of a human rights forum. The topic? Organ harvesting in China. Specifically, the harvesting of organs of living practitioners of Falun Gong, a persecuted spiritual discipline, by the Chinese Communist Party’s military and security apparatus.

Belle Selene Xia, a deputy city councilor of Helsinki with the True Finns, a right-wing political group that tries to stay out of trouble, received the email. Xia happens to be a staunch supporter of the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. Some people in her position, occupying political office in a famously liberal country, might therefore ignore the email. But not Xia.

The President of the European Economic and Social Committee – EESC, Henri Malosse, opened the Conference entitled “Organ Harvesting in China: Europe must act now” hosted at the EESC in Brussels. He considered ‘scandalous’ that such a practice is being undertaken by the Chinese authorities and hoped the European Union leaders would take up the issue with Chinese president, Mr. Xi Jinping, during his visit to Brussels on the 31st March 2014.

President Malosse declared that using body parts from prisoners of conscience, executed persons and minorities groups, to be sold in China or outside the country, is a disgrace for humanity and should end immediately.Speakers in the debate also included Members of the European Parliament, representatives of NGOs, lawyers and doctors fighting against the practice, calling for the respect of the fundamental rights in China. They all affirmed that the trafficking in human organs violates medical ethics and international human rights standards adopted by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Medical Association, the Transplantation Society and other international organizations.

Heard of human trafficking? Not sure how it happens? Didn’t know Canadian boys and girls are being bought and sold for sex? Did you think the slave trade was eradicated 200 years ago? Think again. Human trafficking, the modern day slave trade, is alive and well in Canada. And it hurts us all. Human trafficking is the fastest growing and most lucrative criminal enterprise in Canada. In fact, a trafficker earns an average of $280,000 per year per victim in Canada. In January, Ottawa saw the first teen pimp case in Canadian history. In February, law enforcement from Alberta to Nova Scotia, launched Operation Northern Spotlight targeting pimps and johns, which also rescued under-age victims, some as young as 15 years old.

Join the Economic Club of Canada and the Joy Smith Foundation on Wednesday March 26th, at the Hotel Westin in Ottawa, for your chance to attend an exclusive and gripping discussion. Hear testimonies from a human trafficking survivor, an anti-human trafficking law enforcement expert (head of Montreal’s VICE and Drugs Unit) and President of the Joy Smith Foundation, Joy Smith, moderated by Hon. David Kilgour, on the insidious nature of human trafficking, which is targeting our Canadian youth.

Parliamentarians Against Forced Organ Harvesting (PAFOH), a new group created in Australia’s Parliamentary Friendship Groups whose purpose is to raise awareness among Parliamentarians of the issue of forced organ harvesting and transplant tourism across the world. Contact Persons: Senator John Madigan Mr Craig Kelly MP Co-Convenors John Madigan is a good man and an uncompromising…

Ruslana Lyzychko, Ukrainian protest leader, encouraged Chinese people to rise up against the pathologies of the communist regime, like illegal organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners who are killed for profit.

Ruslana Lyzychko, the most successful Ukrainian singer and winner of the Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine in 2004, received the International Women of Courage Award in Washington, DC on Thursday. Ruslana took part in the popular uprising in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and spent months alongside demonstrators calling for change.

[Ruslana Lyzychko, Ukrainian Musician]:
“You know that justice is on your side and this gives you strength. If you are a positive person, you pray to God and you have strong moral principles, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

OTTAWA—Canada formally acknowledged reports that the Chinese regime is engaged in organ harvesting without consent for the first time at the United Nations on Wednesday.

Canada’s statements at the United Nations are often noteworthy for their specificity and forcefulness, a trend that continued last week.

Canada’s comments were the only ones to prompt response from specific countries, as most other countries speak in generalities and those with documented abuses use the opportunity to make couched statements that deflect from their own human rights issues.

Canada’s human rights adviser at the U.N., Anne-Tamara Lorre, set the precedent during the Interactive Dialogue on Freedom of Religion at the U.N. in Geneva. The dialogue was focused on reports from two human rights-related special rapporteurs at the 22nd meeting of the current session of the Human Rights Council.

For years the international transplant community proceeded under the assumption that China’s organ transplant system would be shifting away from a reliance on prisoner organs, and instead developing its own voluntary donation system.

The matter has been at issue since 2006, after dark revelations emerged about mass, live organ harvesting from practitioners of Falun Gong, a persecuted spiritual discipline. Chinese officials said that only prisoners on death row, due for execution, were harvested for their organs. And only after giving consent.

Since then, organizations like The Transplantation Society and the World Health Organization sought out ways to cooperate with China, and were generally careful not to say anything that could be construed as negative about the Chinese Communist Party’s transplant system. International cooperation and progress were the watchwords.

But those efforts seem to have paid off very little indeed, judging by recent remarks by Huang Jiefu, China’s organ czar.

Hon. David Kilgour, JD.
To M.B.A students
University of California at Irvine
March 10, 2014

It’s good to be back in a state where your tw0 trillion dollar economy now appears to have regained its place as the 8th largest in the world, and where your recent Academy awards ceremony was evidently seen live in about 200 countries. It’s of interest for Canadians to know that there are more Californians than Canadians and that as of several years ago there were an estimated 700-800,000 Canadians living in this state. Having last Friday left about three feet of snow in Ottawa, it was a pleasant shock to feel the temperature in the 80-degree (F) range over the weekend.

BY ETHAN GUTMANN Beijing’s ‘New Frontier’ is ground zero for the organ harvesting of political prisoners. To figure out what is taking place today in a closed society such as northwest China, sometimes you have to go back a decade, sometimes more. One clue might be found on a hilltop near southern Guangzhou, on a…

The House of Representatives of the state of Illinois passed a resolution in late February that called on the U.S. government to investigative the source of tens of thousands of organ transplants in China, many of them thought to have come from practitioners of Falun Gong who were murdered expressly for the purpose.

The legislature called the practice “revolting” and asked President Obamato “take all reasonable steps” to bring an end to it.

It also described the practice of Falun Gong, the circumstances of its persecution, and the state of human rights in China broadly.

Reports and evidence that practitioners of Falun Gong were harvested for their organs in China emerged starting in 2006. In that year a Canadian human rights attorney, David Matas, and a former parliamentarian, David Kilgour, published a reporting indicating that around 41,500 organs are suspected to have come from Falun Gong victims from 2000 to 2005.

Permit me to thank you for the welcome given to the recent delegation from Canada. The visit and our prime minister’s address to the Knesset were widely reported across our country.

Permit me to repeat four excerpts from the speech:

“Canada supports Israel fundamentally because it is right to do so … The special friendship between Canada and Israel is rooted in shared values … Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law … when (universal values) are threatened anywhere, they are threatened everywhere.”

When human dignity is denied in a major way in China, it can threaten us all, so I hope the legislators and peoples in both our countries will do what is correct without misplaced fear.

All of us in the international coalition to end organ pillaging/trafficking in China can be pleased that you’re holding this important hearing.

Time is urgent; I am certain that men and women convicted of nothing are currently being killed in China so that their vital organs can be sold.

MEP Niccolò Rinaldi is a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament.

Organ trafficking is one of the most important issues government agencies and human rights organizations are fighting on an international scale due to the international criminal networks which profit from the sale of human organs. One of the tragedies of the modern medical world is that involuntary organ transplant and organ harvesting is increasing as medical science finds new ways of extending life expectancy. The removal of vital organs specifically for transplant, and sometimes medical research, without permission, is often, performed with the assistance of trained medical personnel yet without the donor’s consent..
This reality though becomes even more brutal when this criminal and inhuman activity is conducted with the government’s consent or even facilitation. This is the case of China, where organ harvesting from prisoners is an official government policy conducted at public hospitals.
During its plenary of the December 12, 2013, the European Parliament passed a Resolution on the serious human rights abuses in China, and more specifically violations related to organ transplants, which have recently come to light. China is one of the leading countries worldwide regarding the execution of prisoners. It appears though that the Chinese government has transformed this fact into a multimillion dollar business.